


Lucia and the Devil

by OtherCat



Series: Chronology [3]
Category: Chrno Crusade
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/OtherCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fairytale relevant to a minor plot point in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/67861/chapters/89583">Children of the Water</a>. A fairytale about the first jewel witch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucia and the Devil

Once there was a court astrologer who was really a sorcerer. This sorcerer had a demon familiar he called Woden, after one of the old, dark pagan gods, because that was the name that the demon had given him to use. This sorcerer also had a daughter whom his now deceased wife had named Lucia, for the saint who had given her would be pagan suitor her eyes in a box.   
  
Lucia was a very intelligent girl, and if she had been a boy, her father would have instructed her in the arts of sorcery. Since she was not, she learned to sew, cook, keep her father's accounts and manage their few servants, (for he was a very successful and popular court astrologer). Though she had poor eyesight, she loved to read, and could be found reading anything she could get her hands on, except for her father's sorcery texts, which were kept under lock and key, and written in a cypher only he knew.  
  
Lucia's curiosity was very great, so great that she often appalled her governess and her father with her constant questions. One scolded her for her unladylike interests, and the other despaired of her ever finding a husband, but Lucia couldn't be made to care, or to hold her tongue. When her questions went unanswered, she looked for the answers on her own, until her father banned her from physics, mathematics and the natural sciences, and greatly restricted her access to philosophy and history.   
  
Woden watched this battle between father and daughter with great amusement. "More sins are committed from ignorance than from knowledge," he said to himself. "My Master is a fool." Yet he said nothing to his master the sorcerer, because the sorcerer never asked him what he thought about it.   
  
Instead, Woden watched Lucia and her attempts to conceal her studies from her father and governess. He read her notes, and the books she'd been forbidden, and was startled by the depth of her understanding. (For demons hold human intellect in contempt.) "If she were not human, she would almost be the equal of any of my old students," he said to himself. "My master is a very great fool."  Yet because she was human, and the daughter of his master, he did not approach her.   
  
But Lucia noticed him. At first she thought him a spy set by her father, watching to make sure that she read nothing forbidden to her. Then she noticed that while he watched her, he never seemed to report anything she did. This made her very curious, both about the demon, and his possible motives, so one day she asked, "Woden, if you were not set to be my watchdog, would you speak to me?"  
  
And the demon asked, "about what, young mistress?"  
  
"About secrets you know, and secrets you've kept," Lucia said shrewdly.   
  
"Is your name Faustus, young mistress? My name is not Mephistopheles, I assure you." The demon stepped out of the shadows and knelt across from her as she worked on a cross stitch sampler.  
  
"I'd rather be Faustus than Lucia. If I were a man, and not a woman, father would not scold me for studying."  
  
"Mistress, you should be careful, saying such things," the demon said mockingly. "Doesn't your Church teach that a woman behaving as a man is an abomination?"  
  
"The devil quotes scripture, or more specifically, my governess," Lucia said, and was surprised by the demon's laughter. "Why do you watch me, Woden?"   
  
"Because I am bored," the demon replied, and with another chuckle, he disappeared.   
  
This happened time and again, for many nights. Lucia would call upon Woden, and he would appear, they would speak, and when she asked him, "why do you watch me, Woden?" he would reply, "because I am bored."  Her governess did not learn of her discussions with the demon, nor did her father. The nights progressed into weeks, and the weeks into months, and their conversations each with the other progressed from jabs and feints to instruction.   
  
She learned of the stars, the moon and the planets, and of things too small for the human eye to see. She learned of the secret things the demon had learned during his exile from Pandaemonium, the world of demons. She learned of the human world, and of places she had never seen. The walls of the world widened, and it seemed as if there were no end or limit to what she could learn.     
  
And Woden learned that he loved Lucia. Perhaps the reason for his love was was madness, perhaps it was loneliness, but it seemed to him as if her soul matched his. It seemed as if her thoughts followed his, and the barriers between her mind and his did not exist. Yet he did not speak of his love, for she was human, and the daughter of his master.   
  
Now Lucia's father, seeing that Lucia to all appearances was behaving in a proper manner (why bother sneaking after knowledge when the library comes to you and sits at your feet?) decided to find her a husband. This came as a surprise to Lucia, but she did not find the thought of being married to be onerous, so she did not complain overmuch. Unfortunately the suitors her father chose while well connected and otherwise perfectly suitable found Lucia to be intimidatingly intelligent. Her father scolded her for driving her suitors away and her governess accused her of immodesty.   
  
When Woden visited her that night she complained bitterly about this saying, "why should I pretend to be less intelligent than I am? *You've* never complained about my intellect. If anything, you complain about the opposite!"   
  
"I am a demon, young mistress," Woden said. "Human reasoning has always been a mystery to me."  
  
"Ha," Lucia said with dark agreement. "If I must marry, I think I would rather marry you."   
  
The words, though humorously spoken, caused a pang in the demon's heart. "That is not possible, young mistress," Woden said. "I am, after all, a demon."   
  
Lucia's eyes narrowed, as if she could see into Woden's heart. "Woden, why do you watch me?" She asked.  
  
And Woden said nothing. Instead, he rose to his feet and disappeared. He did not appear the next night, or the night after that, though he still watched.   
  
At first, she was grief-stricken. Had she offended her teacher and friend in some way? Was that why he had left without saying a word? Then she was angry. Why would he be offended? She _would_ rather marry Woden, rather than lie about what interested her. Had he been offended by the thought of being the alternative? Or by the idea of wedding a human?   
  
Sullen and angry she fell into a state of melancholy that had the unexpected side effect of making her seem quiet and reserved. The next set of suitors her father introduced her to were rather more favorably impressed by her. Lucia was too sad to care.   
  
What did interest her was recieving her mother's jewelry for her seventeenth birthday. In particular, there was a sapphire brooch, a ruby ring, a jade bracelet, and a pair of diamond earrings  that caught her eye. Each of them had a faint glow which had nothing to do with the way the light reflected off of them. Fascinated she studied them using the methods that Woden had taught her. She discovered that each had been imbued with a tiny amount of spiritual energy--as if they had been worn frequently enough to have acquired the aura of their owner, yet that aura should have faded by now. "Does stone have a spirit?" She wondered.   
  
She thought of taking her discovery to Woden, but remembered that Woden no longer spoke to her. "Well, I'll simply have to find out for myself," Lucia said, and went to work. She combined what she had learned from Woden, with what she knew of astrology--the forms, signs and diagrams helped her to concentrate--and carefully wrote each of her discoveries down. The gem stones sang to her, and she discovered by trial and error (that was more error than trial) the best uses for each.   
  
And Woden found himself intrigued, but still said nothing. "However much she has learned, she is still only a human."   
  
Unfortunately, this use of power eventually drew her father's attention. Sensing alien magic being performed within the wards of his home he followed the energies to their source. He found Lucia sitting in the center of a trine, astrological symbols carefully chalked onto the floor of the attic. The sorcerer had never seen anything like it, and he was horrified--and furious. "You idiot child, what do you think you're doing?!" He shouted, but Lucia gave no sign she heard him. Angrily he went forward, moving to sweep away the gemstones--and was stopped. Woden had appeared, and caught him by the arm.   
  
"Surely my master would never be so foolish as to interrupt the spellwork of another," Woden said. The demon's grip on the sorcerer's arm was hard as iron. "Surely he knows that he could kill or greatly harm the young mistress."   
  
"Release me, demon," the sorcerer commanded. The demon obeyed, though he stood with his wings spread, blocking the sorcerer's way to Lucia. "Did you know of this, Woden?"   
  
The demon smirked. "Yes."   
  
"And you didn't tell me? How dare you!" The sorcerer invoked the geas that bound his demon familiar, and Woden dropped, bound by thorny, spectral chains. Those chains tightened, and the demon screamed, twisting in agony.   
  
Lucia awoke from her trance at the scream and saw Woden being punished by her father. "Father, no!" She cried out. Rage ran through her like water as she cried out a command, and the chains binding the demon broke like glass. Her father stared at them both in horrifed dismay, for she had broken the geas binding the demon. "Don't hurt him!" she said, and neither her father nor the demon were quite certain which one of them she meant.   
  
"Why have you done this?" The sorcerer and the demon asked.  
  
"Because I can," Lucia replied. She smiled angrily, and seemed about to say more, but her eyes rolled up and she collapsed.   
  
The sorcerer went quickly to his daughter's side. By the time he had taken her to her room he was no longer angry with Lucia. Instead he was worried for his daughter, and intrigued by the strange new magic his daughter had created. When he awoke he questioned her, it seemed as if he was seeing and hearing her for the first time. He cursed himself for having missed what was right beneath his eyes-- the gift the demon had seen, and for whatever reason sought to nurture.   
  
Of the demon himself there was no sign, which was unusual, for any demon who has been freed will attempt to slay its former master.  But Wotan did not return, for which both Lucia and her father was grateful. The sorcerer taught Lucia, and also learned from her, and eventually she was courted by and married a young merchant named Johann W. Faust.   
  
_And if they haven't died, why then they're still alive._


End file.
